


The Stolen

by CheerUpLovely



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Kidnapping, League of Assassins - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 16:25:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5097305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheerUpLovely/pseuds/CheerUpLovely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>aussieforgood said: Malcolm (ras) kidnaps one of Olicity’s kids and raises them as his own to become heir to the demon. Years later they come face to face with Oliver in battle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stolen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GarbageChic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GarbageChic/gifts).



There is nothing Oliver remembers clearer than the moment they realised Tommy was gone.

September 19th. 4.59pm.

He remembers standing in the school ground, his daughter clinging to his hand as he waiting for his son to come out from the changing rooms after his first school soccer match. Felicity’s inside taking care of a permission slip for Ava’s museum trip next week. Ava’s skipping around his leg demonstrating what she’ll be doing at next month’s dance show. Tommy’s been inside for twenty minutes and he only went back inside to get the bag he’d forgotten, and he has to go back for it because otherwise his sports kit is going to smell if they leave it over the weekend.

An hour later, they’re surrounded by police, and they’re so frantic that Felicity can’t even focus enough to take over looking at the surveillance cameras that line the school boundaries.

–

September 21st. 5.00pm.

The first forty-eight hours have passed.

No evidence of Tommy has been found.

They know what that means.

–

Tommy’s loss is something they never heal from. It doesn’t drive them apart, but fuses them tightly together. Their daughter is smothered in protection, more so than she’ll ever reasonable need, but they tell themselves that it’s entirely reasonable because their son was kidnapped from inside the most secure school in the city without a trace. They spend years combing the city, every spare second dedicated to finding their son either as the concerned Mayor stepping down to focus on a far more personal campaign that gains the entire city’s support, or as the Arrow and his team burrowing into the darkest parts of the city of any information that might have happened to him.

–

Five years to the day Tommy was taken, they receive a package containing Tommy’s old soccer shirt, the name ‘Queen’ blazoned over a faded number six.

On what would have been his tenth birthday, two months later, they receive his school blazer with a blue poppy tucked into the front pocket he used to hide a toy car in.

Felicity cries she checks the pocket and finds the car missing.

Oliver crushes the blue poppy in his palm and sets an hour later for the one place he knows they grow.

–

Four days later, Felicity gets a call from Diggle who’s picked Oliver up from the airport and brought him straight to the hospital. When she arrives he’s bleeding in more places than she ever imagined, and there’s a fresh Nanda Parbat brand burned into his hip. There are more tears on his face then there are on the nights she finds him sitting Tommy’s room overwhelmed with the thoughts of what would have happened if he’d just followed him into the changing rooms and hadn’t left him alone.

When she enters the room, his voice comes out in a broken sob.

“He wasn’t there.”

–

Oliver returns to Nanda Parbat.

Each time he returns beaten, drained, and without their son.

He doesn’t stop going until Felicity breaks down and begs him to stop. To stay alive for her. For their daughter.

But stopping means giving up. And he can’t give up on his son.

He can’t forget the way his backpack swung as he ran back into the changing rooms calling “I’ll go get it!” before he disappeared from their lives.

–

He goes back one last time, fifteen years later.

His daughter is grown. She’s graduated college, starting to work for Queen Incorporated next month. She’s seeing Diggle’s son, Diggle tells him that he bought a ring a few weeks ago. Felicity’s thinking of stepping down from the company, making way for their business-minded daughter to step up. His family, while incomplete, is settled, and Oliver is ready to say that this is the last time. After this, he’ll stop searching. He’ll trust that his son, wherever he is, is an adult, and that he will make his way home when he’s able.

He cannot lose any more of his family.

He needs to let go.

–

Al-Masruq, they call him.

It means ‘ _the stolen_ ’.

–

Oliver sets sight on his son when he’s on his knees before Malcolm, the current Ra’s al Ghul, and while it has been many years since he last saw his son, he knows instantly that it’s him. The young man before him is a mirror image of his younger self, his hair drawn back and pinned in place in a way that reminds him of Felicity’s low ponytails when he first met her. The hollow eyes that stare down at him are the same as his wife’s, and it twists the final knife into his heart.

Every time he came here, and his son was here all along.

“Tommy,” he whispers, tracing every shred of his face to find any hint of the little boy he loves. Fifteen years with the League is an unspeakable level of mental torture, and to think of his son enduring what he could barely stand for five weeks makes him feel sick.

“You will address me as Al-Musraq, Heir to the Demon.”

The young man’s face doesn’t even shift as Oliver’s heartbreak comes out in a ragged sigh, one filled both with the disappointment that he never found him sooner and the acceptance that the boy he once swore to protect from monsters underneath his bed is truly lost to him.

“All Kings need an heir, Oliver, it was nothing personal,” Malcolm remarks from his side. “I’m sure you understand, what with your daughter rising in the ranks so quickly.”

“He is not your king, he is a Queen, and he is  _my son_ ,” Oliver spits darkly at him. “ _ **MY SON**_.”

“We’ll see about that,” Malcolm says calmly, turning to Tommy with a callous look. “Al Sah-Him has repeatedly trespassed on our lands, taken the lives of our men, and seeks to take the Heir to the Demon away from his post. Al Sah-Him is a traitor to the League. What is our punishment?”

“Death.”

The word rolls off his tongue far too easily for Oliver’s liking.

“Then I expect a corpse when I return.”

Malcolm leaves, and Oliver is alone with his son for the first time since he hugged him after his winning goal that day on the soccer field. He’s spent years planning what he would say to his son again if he were granted just one more minute with him, one more moment with his son, and now he’s faced with it, he’s actually afraid. He’s afraid of what Malcolm has turned his son into.

“Tommy-”

“Al-Musraq,” he corrects coldly as he circles his father. Oliver goes to stand, but a blade at his throat stops him. “Remain on your knees.”

“Tommy, please listen to me-”

“Do not address me by that name again,” he insists. “Thomas Queen is dead.”

_Oliver Queen is dead._

“Your name is Thomas Robert Queen, you were born on November 20th, 2021 in Starling General Hospital.”

“Thomas Queen is dead,” he repeats in a cold tone.

“Your mother’s name is Felicity, and you have her eyes. You have a sister who’s two years older than you named Ava. You have a family who love you and we have never stopped searching for you, Tommy.”

“Thomas Queen is dead.”

“You played soccer, and you were real good at it,” he remembers as he takes in the stoic face of his son. Felicity’s right, their son’s grown up to look just like him. “You liked toy cars, you used to race them over the walls. Your favourite food is watermelon and you love the colour blue.”

The blade digs in a little tighter to his jugular this time. “Thomas Queen is dead.”

_Oliver Queen is dead._

“Tommy, don’t do this,” Oliver pleads, his voice a whisper. “I just want to take you home. We miss you. We love you. Your mother wants you. I want you. You’re our son, Tommy. We just want our son home.”

“Thomas Queen is dead.”

“Tommy,” he chokes out. “We love you. We never stopped, I swear.”

“Thomas Queen is  _dead_!” he snaps, pressing his blade so deeply against Oliver’s skin that it’s evident how this is going to end. The slightest movement of the blade will slice his jugular open and he will be dead in moments. “My name is Al-Musraq.”

“Your name is Tommy,” Oliver says, meeting the darkened orbs too similar to that of the woman he won’t be making it home too. “I named you that the first time I held you in my arms. You’re my little boy, and  _I love you_.”

He feels the slice of the blade, the warmth of blood against his wound, and then all he feels is the cruel mocking of a voice he left behind many years ago.

_Oliver Queen is dead._

–

Lucidity comes back to him in waves. Taunting him. Releasing him slowly as if it never truly intends to. Tommy recognises this feeling. Usually when he comes to he finds himself in a new city, a new country, a new room, because they never want him to remember the journey to it. They never want him to find his way home.

He really wants to go home.

When his eyes flicker this time, all he sees is red. He’s stained in blood that isn’t his own, and so is the blade that Ra’s gifted him with two months previously.

At his feet, a man lies dead on the ground. His eyes are open, cheeks pale. He wears a simple t-shirt with jeans, a leather jacket constricting his movements as much as the bindings on his hands. He wears a wedding ring. This man has a wife who will mourn his passing. This man is loved. This man has come into the centre of the Demon’s lair and has not survived.

“Dad?” he whispers, the blade falling to the ground.

_“Your name is Thomas Robert Queen, you were born on November 20th, 2021 in Starling General Hospital.”_

“You see, Al-Musraq,” a voice taunted behind him. Ra’s comes to his side with a smile that is far too calm for what is happening. “There is no home for you to go to.”

“He was looking for me,” Tommy whispers. “You killed him.”

“You killed him.”

_“You have a family who love you and we have never stopped searching for you, Tommy.”_

“No,” Tommy chokes out, shaking his head firmly as his trembling hands rise up, covered in the blood of his own father. “No, I wouldn’t-”

“Don’t be so naive, Al-Musraq,” Ra’s tells him. “Magic can do wonderful things, take us to wonderful places, or even make us do terrible things,” he taunts. “This is your home, take that as a reminder.”

“He wanted to take me home,” Tommy murmurs.

“And what will you do if you go home?” Ra’s asks. “Your father is dead by your own hand. What will you tell your mother? Your sister? They’re waiting for this man to return home to them, and he never will, because of you.”

Because of him.

_“I just want to take you home. We miss you. We love you. Your mother wants you. I want you. You’re our son, Tommy. We just want our son home.”_

“I never wanted to-”

“What will your mother think? The man she loves dead on the ground because of the boy he refused to let go of.”

There are tears. Angry tears that stream down his face, pooling against his chin as he wipes away the blood he’s intentionally smeared on his skin. The blood of his father. The blood he came from. The blood of his family. The father that never stopped searching for him. The father he has killed.

_“We love you. We never stopped, I swear.”_

“So tell me, Tommy Queen, do you still wish to go home?” Ra’s asks.

He waits until his hands stop shaking. He thinks of the image he still carries of his mother singing to him, of his sister holding his hand on the first day of school, of his father praising his soccer goal. He cannot replace that with the image of his dead father at his feet, the sight of his mother’s horrified cries and his sister’s tears. He cannot return to that. Not if he can keep them from the same fate as his father by remaining here.

_“Your name is Tommy. You’re my little boy, and I love you.”_

“Thomas Queen is dead,” he mutters, his voice empty by his own accord for the first time. “My name is Al-Musraq.”


End file.
